changeadminWearing an oversized shirt, protective orange gloves and a disposable headcap, Rukmini Devamma expresses her delight at working at the biogas plant.
Rukmini Devamma says, “Since the biogas plant was set up, we are being paid well for our work. We are also provided with all the necessary safety gear, such as masks, gumboots and gloves. With a safe working environment, we are encouraging others to join us and work with us as well.”
Rukmini is part of a group of women employed at the biogas plant near Bowenpally Vegetable Market. They sort and segregate waste, operate machinery, and handle administrative roles. This plant offers women workers a steady income and skill development.
Bowenpally is a locality in Hyderabad where roughly 10 tons of vegetable and fruit waste are collected every day. This waste previously went to landfills.
Since the market set up an on-site biogas plant, it now uses nearly all the waste collected. It generates around 400–500 units of electricity and 30 kg of biofuel a day.
The electricity powers the market’s streetlights, stalls, administration building, and water-supply network. The biofuel supplies the market’s commercial kitchen, helping keep the marketplace clean and pollution-free.
Inside the biogas plant, employees like Rukmini Devamma chop, shred, and grind vegetables into slurry. The slurry then feeds into anaerobic digesters, and the resulting gas is stored in balloons for later use.
The leftover slurry produces liquid bio-manure, which farmers use as fertiliser. Biogas is also collected in a separate tank and sent through a pipeline system for cooking.
The biofuel supplies a 100% biogas generator, which powers the cold storage rooms, water pumps, shop, and streetlights. The plant has cut the market’s electricity bill by roughly half, from an earlier average of about ₹3 lakh a month.
Following its impact, five more such plants at other market yards have been funded. These include Gudimalkapur, Gaddiannaram, Erragadda, Alwal and Saroornagar, with capacities suited to the waste generated at each yard.
The biogas plant at the Bowenpally Vegetable Market is not an isolated case; across India, organic waste is finding a second life as fuel, electricity and valuable manure.
Under the Swachh Bharat Mission, launched in October 2014, scientific management of municipal solid waste has remained a core objective. As the Mission evolved, organic waste has been recognised as a valuable resource to produce clean energy.
Biogas, produced through the anaerobic decomposition of organic waste, is among the most viable, economical and environmentally friendly cooking fuels available.
The by-product slurry is rich in nitrogen and serves as an effective organic fertiliser. It reduces dependence on chemical inputs, lowers costs and helps maintain soil fertility. This delivers a dual benefit from a single initiative.
Waste-to-energy, under Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban 2.0, takes different forms across India, depending on the available waste and community needs.
By adopting innovative, circular approaches to waste management, they reduce environmental impact and unlock waste’s value as a resource.
At the Shrimati Manekba Vinay Vihar Educational Complex in Gandhinagar (Gujarat), the kitchen cooks for more than 500 people every day.
Around 250 hostel students receive two meals daily, alongside 15 staff families living on campus. The kitchen, however, has eliminated its dependence on LPG and transitioned to a biogas-based cooking system.
The Vasumati Charitable Trust, which manages the campus, operates two biogas plants with a combined capacity of 90 cubic metres per day. The feedstock includes dung from 222 cows housed in the trust’s cowshed.
It is supplemented by kitchen waste and agricultural residue from nearby fields. The gas meets the campus’s entire cooking-fuel requirement, without which 30 LPG cylinders would have been required every month.
The institution shows how innovative, science-based waste management can drive energy self-reliance and sustainability.
Institutional mechanisms such as the Gujarat government’s Institutional Biogas Plant Scheme and the Gujarat Energy Development Agency (GEDA) provided the policy and financial support to make this transition.
Gujarat continues to advance alternative energy and sustainable development, reducing pollution and achieving energy self-sufficiency. It also enables the scientific disposal of organic waste from gaushalas and educational institutions alike.
In Uttar Pradesh, Prayagraj’s bio-CNG facility is a waste-to-energy plant designed to process diverse forms of organic waste. With the plant’s launch, Uttar Pradesh has reached a significant milestone in green energy and waste management.
The project represents a forward-looking step towards environmental conservation while advancing the mission of turning waste into a valuable resource.
The plant can process 343 tonnes of organic waste a day and produce around 21 tonnes of bio-CNG. Its multi-feedstock model uses wet waste, paddy straw, cattle dung and poultry litter, creating productive uses for agricultural residues while helping address stubble burning.
The facility operates under a public-private partnership model and absorbs bulk organic waste from hotels, restaurants and apartment complexes.
Daily wet-waste supply has increased from just 7–8 tonnes initially to around 125 tonnes, strengthening waste utilisation in the city.
The bio-CNG produced is sold under the Compressed Bio-Gas (CBG) – City Gas Distribution (CGD) Synchronisation Scheme, reaches users through the fuel cascade route, and currently supports city transport.
The process also produces 28 tonnes of high-quality compost daily, which local farmers can use to support regenerative farming.
Looking ahead, the project is expected to extend clean energy access to around 45,000 households through piped gas and reduce carbon emissions by approximately 57,000 tonnes annually.
At Adarsh Gaushala in Laltipara, Gwalior’s largest cowshed, more than 10,000 cattle call it home. In October 2024, the cowshed gave its daily dung a new purpose by inaugurating a 100-tonnes-per-day (TPD) Compressed Bio-Gas (CBG) plant.
The facility made Adarsh Gaushala India’s first modern, self-sufficient gaushala built around a state-of-the-art CBG plant.
The plant’s design goes beyond cattle dung alone. It is Madhya Pradesh’s first CBG plant built to also process vegetable and fruit waste collected from markets and homes.
Spread over 5 acres, the ₹31-crore project was developed in collaboration with Indian Oil Corporation.
Every day, it converts 100 tonnes of cattle dung into two tonnes of compressed biogas. It also produces 10–15 tonnes of dry bio-manure daily, providing an affordable input for farmers in nearby districts and encouraging organic farming.
The benefits extend beyond the gaushala. CBG provides a cleaner, eco-friendly alternative to fossil fuels, while converting dung into energy reduces carbon emissions and supports climate change mitigation.
The project has also created local employment opportunities, built skills in green energy and sustainable practices, and contributed to the local economy.
The CBG plant is more than an industrial facility. It represents collaboration between society and government and demonstrates how waste can be converted into useful resources.
Wrapping Up
Across these four stories, the feedstock changes, but the principle remains the same: waste is no longer the end of the cycle. They demonstrate what happens when waste management is designed around resource recovery.
Under the Swachh Bharat Mission, this approach is expanding the role of urban waste infrastructure beyond collection and disposal toward processing, energy generation, and productive use of by-products.
Cow dung, kitchen waste, crop residue and discarded vegetables are being converted into fuel, electricity and manure. Multiplied across India’s cities, campuses, cowsheds and markets, this approach moves beyond isolated projects.
From generating clean energy to promoting organic practices, these efforts highlight a scalable pathway for urban India, where scientific waste management, community participation, and forward-looking policies together pave the way for cleaner, greener, and more self-reliant cities.
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